Hi Dave. At the beginning of the thread, you mentioned removing a compression phase in the HE amp of the Keiga 2.1 plate you used initially, and significantly improved the sound. Any details on this if one were to attempt removing that circuit himself? I'm more of a gear head than a spark E. Thanks. I dig your link to the xover's as well.

I recall this one but I won't be able to give very specific details on removing the board.

It's a separate board inside the amp if I recall correctly. It has the chip(s) on it.

I looked up the datasheet on the chip and figured out which were the input and ouptut pins. I removed the board and ran jumpers between the input and output traces on the board as if jumping a tape or effects loop.

SO my Tysens (FF85kEn + SDX7en) have been relegated to the shed in favour of my FE127 Metronomes due to xover difficulties - I just couldn't get the pllxo to sound good and I couldn't afford a DCX2496.

Four days later postie dropped it off and I plugged it into my CD player, and it sounded terrible. A quick email exchange and - doh - the Myryad CD outputs 2.3Vrms and that's too much (1Vrms max on this version) but running via the Monica3 DAC sounds really not bad. Considering that the signal now has an extra ADC-DAC in the path it's really quite acceptable (Myryad --> Monica3 --> Miniwatt --> +- MiniDSP --> Fe127e Mets) but roll on the SPDIF input. And I can confirm that MiniDSP's support is excellent :-).

I've set up Tysen to xover using 4th order LR at 340 Hz which is pretty close to Dave's suggestion but a steeper roll-off. They are in a smallish room (12 x 16) which may have something to do with it. I'm still playing around but these speakers now rock much better than the Mets. Symphonic music (especially Holst's The Planets) is really much more fun.

Is it better than a DCX2496? No idea I'm afraid. Does it do what it says on the box? Absolutely. Am I the best person to judge? Not really, I'm a bit of a noob to all this I'm afraid. But it is a good price and and service is good and they seem like a nice bunch of guys. I'm glad I bought it.

This is a great thread. Lots of cool ideas floating around. I've been getting so lost in my speaker goals that if I were any more mentally unstable I'd surely have jumped off a building by now!

I've gone from FR125SR MTM's > OB Coral Flat10 ii's with a 10" woofer (vented) to what I've tried this morning which is a FAST knock-up to see if it all works. Sure does! I love the Corals but they're too big for the room. In OB the room is literally swamped with music. This is good and bad I love the ease of power handling of the big Coral and its ability to get out of the way of the music, but it's just too much for the room.

I have a love hate relationship with the Brynn's. More specifically the FE127e. No, it aint got acne (eN). The bottom end of its capabilities just doesn't seem worth the effort for all but the smallest rooms. Even then you need to be careful of SPL's. This is fair of course. It's a 4.5" driver with < 1mm Xmax.

So I took those 40L cabs with the 10" woofers, turned them 90 degrees facing out and pushed 'em back. Slotted the Brynn's in front of them and put a 2nd order HP filter in front. XO is around 220Hz I think (102uF & 6.8mH). Blended the woofers in which are still using a plate amp and wired in series, so no stereo bass up to around 220Hz -- it's just a test after all

Anyhow, they sound bloody great! After a few minutes getting my head around a 'box' sound again I realised how much I missed one of its attributes in particular, its focus.

So I can scratch OB from the list of things to try -- It can be re-visited at a later date in a much larger room. The new crossroad is where to go from here. I think I'm back to trying an Alpair 7 when they become available here. , or an Alpair 12 as I don't think the larger size would be wasted. The idea of a driver moving as less as possible is appealing to me.

All in all a big success. Thanks for the thread Dave

*edit: Dave, re: DCX2496. I'm glad I read what you wrote up there, "the sonics just sucked...". I've been sorely tempted to get one of these buggers but the idea of putting all those opamps between a tube pre and a tube amp makes me cringe! I wont bother now. Time to look at the PLLXO's (a bit scary -- its fair to say I have no real clue what I'm doing, after all this time)